The present invention relates to insulators of the type used to support electrical conductors or the like in such a way that they will be incapable of contacting a supporting structure on which the insulator is mounted.
Insulators of this type have a wide variety of applications. For example, a modern aircraft requires extremely complex eletrical circuitry, and this circuitry in turn requires many conductors which must extend, for example, along the interior of the fuselage of the aircraft while being supported in such a way that these conductors will not contact or rub against the wall of the fuselage. Of course, such insulators are required in many different installations to carry conductors so that they will not rub against or otherwise contact supporting structures. Thus such insulators find a use in many different types of vehicles as well as in static structures.
At the present time insulators of this type, known as stand-off insulators, require a number of components which must be assembled together, so that the structure of such insulators is undesirably complex and expensive. In addition, the conventional insulators of this type do not reliably support conductors in such a way that they will be reliably maintained out of contact with a supporting structure. On the one hand if the conventional insulators are made sufficiently robust to withstand bending as a result of vibrations, inertia forces, and the like, they cannot maintain the conductors at the required distance from the supporting structure. On the other hand if such insulators are made of a length sufficient to locate the conductors at the required distance from the supporting structure, then they are easily bendable as a result of vibration or inertia forces or the like, and for this reason cannot reliably maintain the conductors out of contact with the supporting structure. In addition, the conventional insulators are undesirably heavy and large so that on the one hand they take up too much space and on the other hand add too much weight to a vehicle.